It's not as demand for ammunition by the DHS is terribly new.
Manufacturer
Winchester posted an award to its site in 2009 agreeing to
deliver 200 million rounds for the agency over five years. But if
that's accurate it's an additional order that's still coming in
on top of the others.

Major General Jerry Curry, (Ret) offered up a good point when the
750 million order became public last fall saying that number of
bullets was more than 10 times what U.S. troops used in a full
year of Iraqi combat.

Now that a new
Department of Homeland Security order for another
200,000 hollow points has been placed, we're curious to
see what happens to that much ammunition in 12 months. Knowing
that DHS trains rural, regional, and federal law enforcement at
their Georgia training center, we took a look online to see what
programs they have requiring so much firepower.

Homeland Security offers a
Rifle Training Program, a Precision
Rifle Observer Training Program (PROP)that
looks like a 37 hour sniper/counter-sniper course. The bonus at
PROP is any uniformed officer can take the course and receive the
advanced training, since assignment to a sniper team or tactical
unit is not required. No rifle or sniper training at all, in
fact, is required to take this one where public servants learn to
take out targets at more than 1,800 feet away.

Finally, the Survival
Shooting Training Program (SSTP) seems like a
challenging 8.5 day Master course where Law Enforcement Officer's
become acquainted with a variety of weaponry, technique, and the
effects of stress.

Definitely a comprehensive program, especially the
Interesting Facts About The Firearms Division page.
I'll list them below in their entirety after I point one fact
that states all the firing in the above courses, and whatever
else gets expended, requires about 15 million rounds of
ammunition a year.

That doesn't make the most recent batch of 200,000 rounds seem
out of line, but those billion or so rounds, seem like they could
be better accounted for. Anyway, as promised — all the
interesting facts about the firearms division:

The indoor range complex and the outdoor ranges (to include 2
outdoor ranges currently under construction) have a combined
total of approximately 384 firing points for live fire training.

These do not include the various scenario-based training
ranges that FAD uses for tactical training.

FAD has approximately 9 training ranges used for
scenario-based tactical firearms training.

There are approximately 150 staff members assigned to the
Firearms Division including managers, support personnel and
instructors.

The instructor cadre consists of former law enforcement
and/or military personnel who now work for the Federal Law
Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) and current law enforcement
personnel detailed from many of the agencies who participate in
training conducted at the FLETC.

Training requires the use of approximately 15 million rounds
of ammunition annually.

The ammunition includes lead projectiles and reduced hazard
(environmentally friendly) ammunition.

The reduced hazard ammunition accounts for approximately 70
percent of the ammunition expended for training.

FAD offers 8 advanced firearms training programs. These
programs are open to Federal, state and municipal law enforcement
personnel. Some international law enforcement personnel attend
these programs when they are sponsored by one of the Federal
partner agencies.

FAD offers approximately 120 firearms courses. Many of
these are contained in FLETC basic, agency basic and advanced law
enforcement training programs.

FAD conducts advanced export training (off site) at other
Federal, state and municipal facilities around+ the country on an
as-needed basis.

** Signing off the
DHS FLETC home page we noticed a small banner at the bottom
right stating firearms training requires about 20 million rounds annually. So
give-or-take five million or so. No wonder they need so many
deliveries.